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Was watching the PE documentary from BBC4 the other night and was rather depressed by the assumption that He Got Game was the last worthwhile thing they did - fair play, it's a hell of a tune but I looked in horror at emusic and there's about ten albums on there, how have these been assessed by you lot? does the fact they self released these make them any less worthwhile than Fear of a Black Planet?

I know some of you have seen them live and were very enthused, and despite Flav's odious reality TV show (the Vince Neil of rap!) I'd like to think Chuck hasn't calmed down...

The titles and rather generic looking covers were a bit of a turn off, not to mention the return of Professor Griff who remains rather outspoken and unapologetic, we'll pop the 2012 Louis Farahkhan Award For Racial Equality in the post...! Will defo check that last album out though, thanks.

Whilst we're at it, favourite PE tracks/lyrics? by the Time I Get To arizona has been jukebox'ing in my head for days, all the more so for the meaning of it (from the bbc4 documentary)

How You Sell Soul.. has some great stuff on it, such as Harder Than You Think, and also the one off single from two years ago Say It Like It Really Is ("It's my birthday! I'm 50 years old!") is ace. Clips from the videos for both of those were on that BBC4 documentary actually.

Does anyone know if the funds have actually been raised yet? If this is just an idea, fiver says nobody cares and the albums never get made.

I feel like I'm done with these guys. Admittidly, I haven't heard the last record which people here are saying was actually pretty good. But, with Flavour Of Love, the BBC documentary brilliantly highlighting their historical involvement with nasty, racist politics (how is that *so* swept under the carpet, by the way?). Also, more personally, the last London show was a fucking disgrace, in my view. Not only was doing a Fear of a Black Planet tour (ANOTHER Don't Look Back tour!) painting themselves as such a past-it, backward looking band, Flavour in particular came over as an absolute douche - rambling for literally minutes and minutes between songs, and then interrupting the band's encore to shout to the people (not unwisely) leaving, plugging his autobiography about his "struggles".

Yeah, I'm done with them. And this stunt seems like the twitching of a corpse if you ask me. Does anyone still seriously consider them to be relevant? The BBC doc even got me wondering if they ever were, or if they just got lucky a la Sex Pistols.

or has done since about 1994, but to suggest that they never were relevant and just got 'lucky' is utterly ridiculous.

From 1988 to 1990 they were easily the biggest group in hip hop. 'Fear of a Black Planet' is a peerless classic and 'Fear of a Black Planet' is arguably the best hip hop album ever made. Chuck-D is one of the greatest rappers that ever lived and the influence the Bomb Squad have had on popular music is incalculable. Luck has nothing to do with it.

Pretty much seem them as hip hop's rolling stones these days - still putting out records that are almost certainly outsold week on week by their back catalogue albums and making their money from touring. Not 'relevant' in the way that they were in their prime, but to maintain a musical career almost 30 years after they started is pretty good going.

I haven't seen them since 2000 (at Stratford Rex) so can't really comment on their recent live shows, but they put on an amazing show then and didn't try to sell anybody anything.

Quite right to call me out on that one. Indeed, those records were absolutely cutting edge, and still stand j

I suppose, what I was getting at, but wasn't articulating at all was the question of their being heralded as the progressive voice of black youth, or did they just kind of get labelled as that owing to the fact that their records were so incredible and progressive with faintly political lyrics in places. In terms of them being the unofficial spokespeople of the oppressed black underclass, that's what it seems to me - with all their dirty politics, and apparent empty headedness - they arguably stumbled into, and their inability to sustain that is what's helped bring the house of cards down over the last decade or two (especially stripped of, as you say, their diamond edge production).

'Fight The Power' for example is about as 'political' a tune as I can think of.

In terms of being the spokespeople for the black underclass, I'm not sure they saw themselves as this explicitly (they were from the pretty middle class Long Island) but it's not hard to see why a lot of black Americans would identify with them.

I didn't see the BBC doc that you mention which by the sound of things made a significant issue of their personal politics, so can't really comment on what was in it, but I do remember that Professor Griff made some fairly virulent anti-sematic comments in an interview which got him kicked out of the band for a time. (He later retracted these and apologised, which I appreciate does not excuse it, but I guess is better than not apologising at all.) Don't know if there were other issues highlighted by the doc that you are referring to that were as bad or worse.

Ultimately I'm pretty sure that what made Public Enemy less relevant was musically based rather than political. The departure of the Bomb Squad was a huge factor, as you point out, but in truth the Bomb Squad were running out of steam by 1992 anyway (by far the biggest PE tune in '92 was a remix of 'Shut 'em Down' by then new-jack, Pete Rock). Hard truth is tho' that by about 1994 hip hop had just moved on without them.

It's a shame that their live show was so poor when you saw them cos on their day they can be truly great. Would also point out Chuck-D's heartfelt and moving tribute to Adam Yaunch as a good example of the fact that their outlook is far from exclusively racist and empty headed.

Last time they played Coachella Flav was thanking the crowd for watching his reality show!

Having said that, I duly checked out How do You Sell A Soul and I have to say I was surprised at the quality, which is at least up there with He Got Game... so actually I'm quite happy to keep an eye on their recordings for the future, there's still a couple more records from the last few years to check out.

and feel kind of guilty about it now. I saw them on that tour and whilst I had a great time it was similar to RussWarf's experience upthread and this was in '95. Constantly stopping the gig to push merch, doing their best songs as medleys, half-hearted delivery - it just felt like they were finished and going through the motions. I didn't think any further records were worth checking out and I wasn't going to buy a record with ^that title.
I'm going to check out their later stuff to see if me and PE can have a long lost reconciliation after all this time.